Shopping for Clothes

Clothes shopping here is a completely different experience than where we hail from!

There are so many places to shop for clothes:  warehouse shops, small shops on the streets or in malls, or off of TaoBao.  All are vastly different than the US, however the malls come the closest.

The first main difference, even in most mall stores: there is only one of each item.  One style.  One size.  So it is like thrift shopping.  They also have small quantities of merchandise; maybe 100-200 items total in a store.  If you like something, but it's the wrong size or a color you don't prefer, you are out of luck. So finding something you like and that fits you is very challenging. Note:  there are MANY items to not like (think t-shirt problems) and in most stores t-shirts make up about 25% of their merchandise. Probably 98% of the stores are a conglomerate of styles and clothing types ie. tennis shoes being sold in the same store as formal wear.  So finding things usually means combing through several stores in several locations.

Depending on the mall, prices are somewhat similar to our mall prices, but the quality is not always good.  I wouldn't mind paying our mall price for something that we really like and that is well made, but I have a hard time stomaching it if it's not.  When I say not good quality, I'm not talking about Wal-Mart grade clothes--those would be considered well-made in comparison to many things we find.  If you've ever ordered something from Shein, you may know what I mean.  The more expensive malls have a few shops with very well made clothes and sometimes multiple sizes, but they are also 10-20% more money than clothes in stores like Dillards.  

In many stores you are greeted by a sales person then followed around while you look through the items. When you find something you like a little bit, they either push you into a dressing room right away or hold it for you while you continue looking.  

They usually put the girls in the same dressing rooms even if there is more than one.  The dressing rooms vary in size but are usually really small.  Most are about the size of a shower; others much smaller.  They do not have mirrors in them--you have to go out to see what it looks like on you.

Store attendant helping Tessa.

They provide shoes  to come out of the dressing room in--and they expect you to wear them.  They greet you coming out of the dressing room and help you adjust the clothing to make sure it is adjusted just right. They like you to try on whole outfits, not just pants or a shirt so if you just want pants, they hand you a shirt that they think would look nice.

These are the things you can generally expect in the mall or small street shops we've been to.

But if you go to the warehouse shops, then you're in for an adventure along with the shopping!

First we have to describe the overall environment.

In one large warehouse, there are hundreds of small stores ranging from very small--maybe 9ft x 9ft to 20ft x 15ft to quite a bit larger.  These are people's homes away from home.  Almost all of them have a small couch for naps, a cupboard for food and personal things.  If they have children, and school is out, the children are running around playing with each other, zooming around on a scooter, playing on a device etc.  If they don't have children they may be playing cards with other shop owners or preparing for dinner (no picture, but one lady was peeling her vegetables in the aisle between stores).  

In the nicer warehouse shopping centers we've been to, the partitions between the shops are wood, sheet rock, or something hard.  In the cheaper ones, they are just curtains sectioning things off.  There are so many aisles of shops and it is really easy to get lost, tell if you've been to that shop before or find your way out of the building on the side you want.

These top two images are from the places with the curtain dividers.  Note the narrowness of the aisles.

This is a nicer place, you can see children in the aisles huddling together.

Because it is their home away from home, you will find many of them eating and sleeping if they don't have customers.  I feel badly for them if they are napping and we walk in, because not only have we interrupted their sleep, but they are shocked and seem to be embarrassed to have foreigners find them sleeping. 

There are beds in every shop.

Food and personal belongings in odd places.

The dressing rooms in these places are curtains pulled around a very small area (about half the size of a shower) or a curtain pulled across half of their store.  Privacy is not a big thing here, so while they do offer you some, gaping holes in the changing areas have been large.  One store owner closed it off to everyone around, but then stayed right there with a clear view of the girls changing.   

This is one where they close off much of the store to create a dressing room.

This dressing room was a real gem.  Not only was the area for changing very small, but you had to stand on their couch/bed to change.  

Greta going into the changing area:

Greta inside the 'dressing room'.  At one point, both girls were in there at the same time.  

That didn't last long!

These are also places that you bargain.  I feel badly to talk down already really cheap prices, but Tom tells me I need to.  It is a good time to practice the little Chinese I do know, so I do try.  I usually only go down $1-3 because they can't be making much money as is.  We've paid about $15 for pants at these places, but as cheap as 3 shirts for $15.

Sometimes they really fuss over you and want pictures for their store WeChat pages.  (This was at a mall--so much more space.)

And then there is TaoBao....Chinese Amazon.  The biggest drawback:  it's all in Chinese characters.  You can search in English, but that is the end of the English. We have to get all of our information from pictures or take a screen shot and scan it for translation, then switch back to TaoBao.  Just very laborious. We have ordered a few clothes from there, but if you get the wrong size, you only have 7 days to return it and it's not a very simple process especially if you are a foreigner.  But we have gotten a couple pairs of Lululemon pants for $35 and they have looked/felt authentic.  Perhaps when we have sizes figured out, we can order more from there and it will be easier for some things.  But sizes are weird here.  Tom came home from work with a company shirt that was a good fit.  The size?  2XL.  Who would have ever thought he'd wear that size?? A learning curve for sure.

Shoe shopping is just as difficult....

Thankfully we persevered enough to get a few new items for school. I didn't love shopping in America so this is stretching my endurance!!  Please don't ask me to do any clothes shopping for you here.  It would kill me off to find something specific!!

While shopping is very challenging, I do love being out among the people and seeing how they function.  I find their ways of life fascinating and endearing.  Their human spirits show ingenuity and strength to come together to navigate life's difficulties together (most especially as seen in the warehouse shop owners).

Update:  Just yesterday we found Decathalon:  a chain store in China with sports clothing.  The aisles were wide, the quality quite good, multiple sizes of the same item and several large dressing rooms with mirrors!  Tessa commented on it feeling like Wal-Mart.  I definitely won't complain about wearing stretchy pants for the next 3 years!